1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a ramp apparatus which is utilized in combination with a vending machine for selectively vending a plurality of containers, and more particularly to a ramp apparatus for causing containers in a vending machine having a staggered stack column to converge so as to permit the use of a single column dispensing mechanism, the ramp apparatus permitting the manufacturers of such vending machines to standardize the dispensing mechanisms utilized in such machines by eliminating dispensing mechanisms which are adapted to dispense containers from staggered stack columns and which further is relatively inexpensive to manufacture and maintain and which affords the optimum conditions for selectively dispensing vendables in a reliable and highly efficient manner while reducing the risk of product bridging to a minimum.
2. Description of the Prior Art
In the vending industry, and more particularly in that segment of the industry which manufactures vending machines that dispense soft drink containers and the like, assorted mechanical and electrical subassemblies have been developed and employed over the years with the focus of attention being directed towards the production of a vending machine which would dispense a larger number of varieties of soft drinks. The prior art is replete with numerous examples of vending machine designs which have been incorporated into a rather uniformly dimensioned housing to accomplish the aforementioned purpose.
As a general matter, the motivation behind the search for a vending machine which will dispense a larger number of varieties of soft drinks has been a desire to discover a means by which the space internally of the vending machine could be allocated or otherwise divided up based upon the numbers of sales of a selected variety of soft drink. This is most commonly referred to in the industry as an allocation of space based upon the sales to space ratio. If the space internally of the vending machine is strictly divided up based upon the sales to space ratio, a typical vending machine which is capable of vending up to six varieties of soft drinks would in reality only dispense two or perhaps three varieties, that is three or four of the available selections on the vending machine would be a single highly popular variety and the remainder of the selections would be varieties which are not so popular. In some cases, in an effort to satisfy customer demands for less popular varieties of soft drinks, vending machine owners have allocated more space to the less popular brands thus causing their respective vending machines to be less profitable than if they had alternatively allocated the available vending machine space based upon the space to sales ratio.
Attempts made in the prior art to address this problem of allocating the predetermined internal volume of a vending machine to increasing numbers of different varieties of soft drinks which have relatively low sales have assumed various forms. For instance, some manufacturers of vending machines employ a rather fixed staggered stack column arrangement in combination with single stack columns for the products which are vended, in an effort to achieve a more desirable space to sales ratio. In other instances, manufacturers of vending machines have developed elaborate adjustable channel assemblies which permit a large volume of the available vending space to be dedicated to one highly popular brand of soft drink, the highly popular brand being dispensed out of one or perhaps two of the available selections on the machine. The utilization of such devices and assemblies and in particular the use of a combined staggered stack, and single stack column arrangement, has caused the manufacturers of these particular vending machines to incorporate several uniquely different dispensing mechanisms in the same vending machine, the individual dispensing mechanisms operable to dispense containers from either the single stack or the staggered stack columns. It should be readily evident that the use of several different types of dispensing mechanisms within the same vending machine has the effect of causing such machines to become rather complicated, increasing the cost of manufacture and multiplying the assorted problems which relate to servicing and maintaining such mechanisms.
Other attempts in the prior art to address the problem of allocating the predetermined volume of a vending machine based on the space to sales ratio have included other more basic and obvious approaches, such as increasing the size of the available housing and employing assorted electronic devices to reduce the physical size of the previously employed mechanical subassemblies. While these assorted mechanical and electronic devices and design changes have operated with varying degrees of success, they are unsatisfactory in one or more respects. For example, some of these devices are relatively cumbersome to utilize, cannot be retrofitted on existing machines and are often expensive to manufacture. Others take exceedingly great amounts of time to set up or alternatively are in need of constant maintenance. Yet another more serious deficiency common among all the prior art devices and assemblies is that they generally do not maintain the maximum number of containers possible in the space which is allocated to that particular variety inside the housing of the dispensing machine. Still another problem with prior art vending machines is product bridging; that is, the positioning of two or more containers in such a way relative to each other that they will not move any further. This, of course, impedes dispensing from that column.
Therefore, it has long been known that it would be desirable to have an apparatus which would permit the predetermined space defined internally of a vending machine to be substantially allocated on the basis of a predetermined space to sales ratio and which further would be operable to reduce the number of different component elements utilized to dispense the containers stored therein while reducing the risk of product bridging.